Leave it in the Ring
by Illyria Lives
Summary: After the Zeus/Atom fight, Tak Mashido and Farra Lemkova find themselves without future, without help. How can they pick up the pieces of a shattered empire? And why was Farra so desperate to buy Atom? Character study.
1. One of Mine

**Title: **Leave it in the Ring, Chapter 1: One of Mine

**Author: **Illyria Lives

**Rating: **T

**Summary: **After the Zeus/Atom fight, Tak Mashido and Farra Lemkova find themselves without future, without help. How can they pick up the pieces of a shattered empire? Character study.

**Disclaimer:** I do not claim ownership of _Real Steel_, or any characters.

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><p>Tak Mashido leaned idly against the wall outside of Sergei Lemvoka's office and listened to the loud crashing of Russian speech from inside. He had never bothered to learn any Russian; all business between him and the Lemkovas, mostly Farra, was covered in rough English. Farra had made it clear to him that her learning Japanese was out of the question from day one, and he figured that two could play at that game.<p>

And so the genius stood, arms crossed, and waited, not knowing what direction the argument inside was following.

With a short guttural word that Tak could only guess as an obscenity, Farra Lemkova burst out of her father's office. Tak stood up straight as she passed, the smallest bit shaken by her appearance.

Ever since day one, Farra had struck Tak as a woman who knew exactly what her appearance did to men. From her skin-tight, curve-hugging mini dresses to the shadow sharpening her already glowing eyes, she dressed to impress, to control. But now, her hair was feathering out of her tight ponytail, her eyeliner was smudged, and she seemed to have ignored how the seams of her acid green dress had twisted on the axis, ruining how the diamond-shaped cutouts brought attention to her hips.

Farra Lemkova was falling apart as she walked past him, and he reached out to her before he knew what was happening.

"_Farra."_ He said, and she stopped, her wrist held lightly in his hand. "What was that?"

He saw her shoulders tense, and she turned on him, eyes blazing. "_You._" She pointed a finger at his chest. "_Vy plokhaya stavka!"_

He didn't ask her to elaborate on whatever she had called him. She turned and began to walk down that hall in her four-inch gold stilettos. Tak followed along behind and asked loudly, "What is your father's decision?"

She stopped, now in the main room of the Zeus suite. Unlike most days after a fight, it was devoid of people. The fans had not arrived, even those with passes, and Sergei had forced all reporters out, a first for the image-obsessed Zeus CEO.

"We are finished," she said, voice shaking but not sad. She was angry. Furious, even. "There is nothing now. All the stock has dropped. The PR department has written us off. We will be lucky to remain in the league, even as an undercard." She turned to Tak, and he could see how much she hated him. They had not had a great working relationship, his cold aloofness keeping her at bay, and her haughtiness not endearing herself to him. When collaborating over the Zeus project, he had tried to shake off her ideas, and she had proved to him why her father trusted her with all of his business: she was unstoppable.

From day one, he had witnessed how Farra Lemkova managed to dominate every medium she turned to. While he had labored over schematics and blueprints for Zeus, she would look at the sketches and already be bringing together intimidating color pallets, moving through proposed advertisements, apparel, the "image" that they would base their campaign around, taking elements to the design that Tak would never have dreamed of. He wouldn't admit it, but there was something incredible about how she could look at an opponent and move into action not only in the ring, but outside, fighting mind against matter to psych out the competition. When that didn't work, buy-outs from backdoor corporations always kept her ahead of the game. She was a master of monopoly.

But now, after one match-up, an underdog, a rusted, junkyard dog of a match-up, she was losing everything.

Because of him.

"Why did you do it?" she asked, and didn't wait for an answer that she knew wasn't coming. "Tell me why you needed that piece of scrap Atom. You could have had any other bot in the league, any other sparring bot in the world, but _you wanted him._ Why? _Why?_" he had never seen her so furious; her accent was growing with each word, and he expected her at any moment to lapse into Russian.

Tak didn't know what to say. He had only casually dropped how useful the robot Atom would be for training Zeus, and she had given him a look and a nod. He hadn't thought that she would go so far as to actually contact Charles Kenton and his pint-sized son. But she had. And it blew up in her face.

So, he gave her the truth. She deserved that.

"_Because he is one of mine."_

* * *

><p>Someone had once asked how Farra had managed to lure the reclusive engineering genius that was Tak Mashido from his comfortable, easy retirement. They had not answered in words, but there had been a glance from Farra in his direction that not many had caught. And even then, they hadn't understood the gravity of it.<p>

Tak had been living after Noisy Boy's defeat in a posh, up-scale apartment, unlisted. He didn't know what he would find behind his door when he opened it on a gray Saturday afternoon, but it definitely wasn't Farra Lemkova.

Dressed in a steel gray mini dress that hugged the curve of her hips and brought attention to her chest with a square cutout, Farra looked like the eye of a hurricane; calm, composed, but aglow with unseen energy. Against the white background of his doorway, her caramel skin glowed, and her sleek ponytail didn't stir in the light, rain-laden breeze.

While he stared at her, unaware what her purpose was, she walked in on black leather wedges and gave him a closed-lip smile. "Mr. Mashido, I presume," she said in delicately accented English. He easily placed her accent as Russian, raising his confusion even more, although he kept his face neutral.

"I represent the Lemkova Corporation. We wish to purchase your services for our robot boxing branch."

Ah. The Lemkovas. Tak felt his hands move into fists, but he hid them in the pockets of his jacket. Luckily they had sent a woman instead of a man, otherwise the robot designer would not have thought twice about hitting him. Instead all could do was growl "Get out."

The Lemkovas had burst from the Russian underground with Rubicon, a boxing bot like nothing American soil had seen in years. Strong, fast, with all-new alloys that left Tak's ruling creation at the time, Noisy Boy, an obsolete piece of scrap that Tak had barely been able to sell for a foreign tour before taking his winnings and virtually disappearing.

The spokeswoman didn't leave. She leaned against one of the sleek leather couches in the living room and gave him a proud look from underneath her thick black eyelashes. "We at the Lemkova Corporation understand that you are a very sought-after engineer and designer, and are willing to offer more than our competition."

There was no competition. Everyone had been frightened to try and bring him back into the game of robot boxing. On one hand, his endorsement would bring in millions, even if the robot sparked dead in the ring. On the other, if the robot succeeded in true Tak Mashido style, there was no one else active in the World Robot Boxing League that could make a bot that could stand against him. They wanted him, but they did not want his bots. But Tak did not even hint at this. He simply stood by the open door and glared.

"They offer you money and fame for your robot designs, but only at the guarantee that they will improve upon past mistakes. Take from your previous victories. As head designer for the Lemkova Robot Boxing Corporation, we would not ask you for this. We would ask you for something new. Something… unique." Her voice purred.

Damn. She had him.

In retirement, that was what Tak hated the most. The modern reviews about the newer bots that had emerged in his absence. "Bringing us back to Noisy Boy," "Like a new-age Alloy," again and again he was the basis for what was right in a bot—or what was wrong. This anonymous woman was offering him a chance to shatter these conceptions of his work, give him a new face, a new identity. Not as the failed designer of Noisy Boy, not the foreigner with Alloy and Gamma at his heels, but a new man. Someone who could once again shock the world by creating things that had never been seen.

She read his silence correctly and stood, making her way to the door. "Should you come to agree with me," she said. He half expected the sultry woman to pull the business card from her cleavage, but instead she lifted up a small purse that he hadn't noticed before. The card she gave him simply read 'Lemkova' with a number to call.

She tilted her chin down, gave him a final closed-lip smile and drifted out his door.

With conviction, Tak took the card into his office. He had once made the mistake of throwing away the future in an attempt to conform. But now… now he would shock the world again.

* * *

><p><strong>Note:<strong> According to the World Robot Boxing League website, Tak Mashido made Noisy Boy, and the Lemkovas made Rubicon, who took the belt from him in 2016. Later he ended up working for them. The robots Alloy and Gamma were mentioned as having come from the Koma Club, where robot boxing started. Alloy has no known maker, so I gave him to Tak, but Gamma was designed by Raiden, co-owner and co-founder of the Koma Club.

When Farra yells at Tak in Russian, she is calling him an unlucky bet. Because really, I couldn't make her curse at him and it seemed a bit fitting with the subject of robot boxing slowly taking over her life. **EDIT: **After re-watching the movie today, I altered Farra's dialogue in Russian so that she calls Tak a bad bet, a la Finn to Charlie. It was too good of an inside joke to pass up.

Review, please. Chapter 2 coming soon.


	2. Control and Rescues

**Title: **Leave it in the Ring, Chapter 2: Control and Rescues

**Author: **Illyria Lives

**Rating: **T

**Disclaimer: ** do not own _Real Steel_ or any associated characters.

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><p>"<em>Because he is one of mine."<em>

At these words, Farra is struck with the sensation of the floor falling from beneath her feet. She turns to look at the genius designer and realizes that this does not surprise her.

In a strange twist, every time she learned something new, a new layer to the quiet, brooding man far to young to have his reputation, it never surprised her, because after a few months partnered with him on the Zeus team, all she came to expect from him was surprises. She had counted on him to keep her and the public on their toes with new technology, with new controls and methods that put them above the rest, made them the standard that other teams were clambering for.

But not this.

"The sparring bot…" she asked him, "is your design?"

He doesn't speak; he nods, and that is like a slap to Farra Lemkova.

She wants nothing more than to move that slap to his face, his pretentious, never-shows emotion face. "Why did you not tell me this?" she demanded.

"It was not your concern," he said, and moved into the full light of the main room, out of the shadowed hallway.

"Now it is my concern!" she shrieked, and also took a step towards him. "Now because of this Zeus is finished. _I_ am finished!"

He gave her a blank look. He didn't understand, couldn't understand… her family was not so much a family as it was a business, and run like a business. Every day she was gauged on her production, her output. And she had clawed her way to the top, to the trusted on in the family to handle all situations, no matter the subject or difficulty. She had been the one to propose recruiting Tak Mashido, and had delivered the offer to him herself. She knew perfectly well, as did her father, that coming from her, no one could refuse an offer. He thought it was because of her understanding of business. Farra and her mother knew that it was because she could control herself. She could give a glow to her eyes at the right moment, curve her back a certain way, and smile without happiness, assuring any and all men that following her was the right choice.

Now, her control was slowly slipping through her fingers, leaving her to slowly grip at empty air and watch her family slowly turn their backs on her, on her advice and her experience. All because of one man and his stupid pride, his secrets, and one tiny little junkyard bot that had found his way home like a twisted prodigal son.

Farra was falling apart at the seams. She did not like this, and found herself turning on Tak Mashido, blocking him out as he tried to explain how he had drawn up the Atom plans while he worked at the Koma Club in Japan with Raiden, half of the dream team that had brought Robot Boxing from the shadows and into the light. Atom had been a success, a robot that learned and mimicked, and even had a small degree of understanding. Raiden eventually drifted away, and Tak scrapped Atom. Compared to the cold-blooded killers in the ring, at the time, no one cared if a robot would understand. They just wanted one that could do, without question. He moved on, made first Alloy, and then collaborated again with Gamma, moving to the United States to become famous on Noisy Boy.

Farra knew all of this. Now, it was so clear.

The learning part of Zeus had come from the Atom design. The ability to understand and adapt was used on an earlier model, forgotten and lost. When it had surfaced again, Tak had wanted it back, to hide the fact that the great Tak Mashido had again made a mistaken, throwing away such a gem. Only to have his perfect bot to fall in the ring to his forsaken masterpiece.

Tak had stopped speaking. He could tell from the way her shoulders tensed and her head bent that she had made the correct conclusion from his hurried, rough explanation. He took a step towards her, only to back away as she moved a hand up to her face, still hidden from him. Her shoulders were slowly shaking. This was not like her. This was wrong.

As unresponsive as he was to the Lemkovas, he understood their politics all too well. The loss of fans, of stock value, of investors… it would cost them more than their robot boxing branch. It would cost them their daughter. They would do to her as they had done to her brother, years before they had joined the boxing circuit. Tak had learned of him while looking through internet articles on the family, soon after he was hired to develop a new fighting robot. Andrei Lemkova, previously head of banking and investments, had been moved to an affiliate company for losing ten million dollars in an investment scam. Now he spent his days peddling motor oil in Vancouver while his younger sister and parents spent summers in the Hamptons and winter in Aspen.

This was wrong.

As much as he hated to admit it, his collaboration with Farra had made one of his most profitable enterprises. He made the machine, the parts, gave it power, but she sold it, advertised it, made it intimating, powerful in appearance. She gave it a reputation and a name. The Zeus debacle was not her fault.

He turned on his heel and headed to Sergei Lemkova's office, and hoped that he could hold onto his English long enough to have a conversation. A very long conversation.

* * *

><p>Farra heard him go, and began to pace. An unappealing habit, according to her mother, but once a young, swamped by enterprise Farra had picked it up, it was hard to put down. Chewing on her thumbnail, her mind was moving past her losses. She had to think over what she would do now. She had a minor degree in psychology, but there was no chance that she was going to sit down and listen to other people's problems.<p>

She stopped when she heard the yelling begin again from her father's office. English, not Russian. The words were muddled, and became even more so when a strange mix of Russian and Japanese came through. There was a loud crash that made her flinch, and then some quiet mutterings.

Tak Mashido appeared in the hallway, soaking wet from the shoulders up. As Farra watched, shocked, he removed his knit cap and twisted it in his hands, making his black hair stick up in all directions.

Farra could barely find her voice. "What…?"

"Your father…" the genius seemed to think over a more analytical approach to his speech, only to shrug and continue, "Your father threw a vase at me."

Farra was lost. "I do not understand…"

"You are no longer finished here," he said, nodded, and turned out the door. Farra was left standing alone in the middle of the empty Zeus suite, composed and returned to her normal state of mind.

She sat down, in a daze, and thought back to an offer she had made a long time ago.

When she first found Tak Mashido, Farra had been expecting something very different. She had not been present at the Rubicon/Noisy Boy fight, and had only seen photos of him in the various papers and Robot Boxing magazines. But the genius could easily have changed in the two years he had been out of public eye.

The man who answered the door to the uptown penthouse was, at first glance, a hipster, frankly: a rough, patchy beard, a knit cap and dark jacket indoors. He looked at her, and, unlike most men, his gaze did not go directly to her chest. Instead he simply looked at her, at the space she occupied, and did not say a word. She took that as an invitation.

In a few short minutes she had read the need in his eyes, the need to have something alike to his previous fame back. And so she gave him that, a small straw to grasp as he wallowed through needed to break again into the robot boxing scene. She had not thought that it was that important. She had thought, at the time, during her meeting with Tak that one would have to be deeply depressed to have needed so much to prove themselves not a failure, but to assert themselves as a strong person. The greatest control was controlling one's opinion of you. And that was what Tak had done with the unveiling of Zeus. He had controlled his image, his history, and changed it with one stroke of a pen as he signed his name on the Lemkova contract.

In the few minutes between her meeting with Sergei and Tak's unexpected rescue, she had fallen more than she had before in her life. She had lost control.

Well, now she was going to get it back.

Farra stood, straightened her dress, smoothed back her hair, and headed back towards her father's office.

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><p><strong>Note: <strong>Go get 'im, Farra!

Again, most of the information about Tak's past and the various Koma Club robots I got from the website for World Robot Boxing.

Please review and favorite.


	3. Dynamo

**Title: **Leave it in the Ring, Chapter 3: Dynamo

**Author: **Illyria Lives

**Rating: **T

**Disclaimer: **I do not own _Real Steel _or any characters.

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><p>"Dynamo."<p>

Tak had returned to his apartment, dried his hair and fixed the few bandages on his hand from when he shattered Zeus's view screen, and never expected to see Farra or any of the Lemkovas again. In his meeting, Sergei had made this very clear before going to town on Tak's contract with a letter opener, and throwing a small vase full of azaleas at him.

And yet, three days later, he opened his door to see Farra, dress a shocking electric blue, a pair of dark sunglasses propped on her head. Rather than a typical "hello" or even a curse, she had waltzed past him and said, "Dynamo."

"What?" he asked, shutting the door behind her.

She turned and gave a closed-lip smile that lit up her eyes without wrinkling her face. "The name of our new boxing bot. My father has gotten the copyright and drawn up a time frame for his design."

Tak cannot help but smile, just a little. "How did you convince your father to do this?" he asked.

Farra shrugged as she moved deeper into his living room. "There were words," she said, leaning against the back of his couch in a familiar way. "And a few vases were thrown; my mother intends to bill you for this."

"Of course," Tak found himself saying, taking everything in in a slight daze which he kept hidden behind a neutral expression. Farra moved on.

"We have been moved, along with a small staff to an affiliate corporation for the time being, Siren Engineering. We will be leading the team for the design of the Dynamo project, and, if we succeed on a small scale—minor leagues—we will be moved again into the Lemkova Corporation Robot Boxing branch." She was proud, and had a right to be. She had given him the second chance of his second chance.

They would be starting from scratch, yes, the very beginning, but it was a chance to take back what Atom had taken with a single fight. They would be breaking records again, resetting the conception of robot boxing as a whole, in time.

Tak looked over a new contract that she had procured from her purse, and seemed, for the first time, to consider how much Farra had given him, in such a short time. She had, rather single-handedly, given him the incentive to rise to the top not once, but twice.

As Tak signed the papers, and Farra smiled, a weight lifting from her shoulders. Without Tak's genius with machines, nothing she had achieved would have been possible. And now, he was agreeing to help her reach the top and control the game for not the first, but the second time in only a matter of four days. "We will start again," she said confidently as he handed back the contract. "We will not be swayed by our past victories… or past mistakes. We leave it all in the ring."

Tak's grin grew a bit wider, and he moved towards her, until they were closer than he could ever recall them being. He didn't look at the heiress; he looked around her, at the space she occupied, how her very presence in his apartment seemed to light it up, reflect back the bareness of it all and make it elegant. She was controlling the air around her, and Tak didn't expect anything less.

He asked, "Must we?"

Farra smiled, but said nothing.

And that was good enough for him.

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><p><strong>Note: <strong>A very short chapter, but I've never been good at breaking things up into equal pieces.

Once again, the company Siren Engineering originally worked with Raiden's partner Kizu after he left the Koma Club. Considering the monoploy that Max seems to think that the Lemkovas have acquired, it's reasonable that they eventually had a merger with them too.

Are Farra and Tak about to get it on? Probably not. Although they are grateful and a little bit dependant on each other, when you put them together in a social outing (if they ever go to a social outing) things sour pretty fast. And they know this.

How will Dynamo work out? I'm also not sure about this. Draw what conclusions you will.

Thanks for reading,

Illyria Lives


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